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tom turner · 03-07-2004, 07:28 PM

trickg

Joined: 26 Oct 2003
Posts: 182
Location: Glen Burnie, Maryland
Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2004 1:21 pm Post subject: First Impressions of the Wild Thing

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I received the Wild Thing UPS yesterday. It is being nicely protected by a Walt Johnson case, is silver-plated and came with the #1 and #2 slides.

Let me just say that prior to playing this horn or looking up which slide was what, I started playing the horn with the #2 slide which was in it when it came.

I didn't have a lot of time yesterday, so I more or less just fiddled with both the WT and my own LB Bach Strad, 25 trumpet with several different mouthpieces starting with a Bach 5C.

First however, lets talk about fit and finish. Needless to say, everything about this horn is impeccable. Everything is on perfectly straight and the finish is flawless. There are no rough edges anywhere and everything seems to line up just right. One other observation that I had was that this horn is heavier than I thought it would be. Now on to the playing.

This horn is very responsive, and it tends to "sing" in your hand, even at the lowest of volumes. You can feel the horn resonating in your hand when you play. I'm not sure if this is considered a good thing or a bad thing, but I kind of like it and like I said, it's very responsive.

I play tested it first using the #2 slide and that gave me a very open feeling, smooth, round, dark sound...up to a point. It almost felt too open in the upper register and I really didn't care for it too much up there. Still next to my Bach, which is a good Bach among Bachs by the way, there is no real comparison. It makes my Bach sound and feel like a student model and I was very surprised by this because I haven't played a horn in a while that played head and shoulders better than mine. So, I fiddled with a couple of different mouthpieces to see if there was a fit issue (gap) and what the differences might be, but pretty much any mouthpiece seemed to play uniformly consistent with whichever slide happened to be in the horn. Intonation with the #2 slide was dead on though, especially if I was playing melodic type things in the staff.

Anyway after a while, I decided to try out slide #1. WOW! Big difference. All of a sudden the upper register was MUCH easier to play and when I fiddled around with some High C plus stuff, this horn certainly wasn't the limiting factor. Compared next to my Bach, it seems to have much better compression/back pressure and there is no fighting to get the horn to pop up there. Of course this is just my first impression with some fairly unsystematic fiddling and testing.

It was only today when I decided to look it up that I found out that the #1 slide is the most open of all of the tuning slides offered for the Wild Thing.

The one thing that has really surprised me is how responsive this horn is for how heavy it is.

I'll keep everyone posted on how the rest of my demo on the Wild Thing goes.

03-07-2004, 07:28 PM	#2 (permalink)
tom turner Mezzo Forte User Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Georgia, USA Posts: 788	trickg's first post trickg Joined: 26 Oct 2003 Posts: 182 Location: Glen Burnie, Maryland Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2004 1:21 pm Post subject: First Impressions of the Wild Thing -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I received the Wild Thing UPS yesterday. It is being nicely protected by a Walt Johnson case, is silver-plated and came with the #1 and #2 slides. Let me just say that prior to playing this horn or looking up which slide was what, I started playing the horn with the #2 slide which was in it when it came. I didn't have a lot of time yesterday, so I more or less just fiddled with both the WT and my own LB Bach Strad, 25 trumpet with several different mouthpieces starting with a Bach 5C. First however, lets talk about fit and finish. Needless to say, everything about this horn is impeccable. Everything is on perfectly straight and the finish is flawless. There are no rough edges anywhere and everything seems to line up just right. One other observation that I had was that this horn is heavier than I thought it would be. Now on to the playing. This horn is very responsive, and it tends to "sing" in your hand, even at the lowest of volumes. You can feel the horn resonating in your hand when you play. I'm not sure if this is considered a good thing or a bad thing, but I kind of like it and like I said, it's very responsive. I play tested it first using the #2 slide and that gave me a very open feeling, smooth, round, dark sound...up to a point. It almost felt too open in the upper register and I really didn't care for it too much up there. Still next to my Bach, which is a good Bach among Bachs by the way, there is no real comparison. It makes my Bach sound and feel like a student model and I was very surprised by this because I haven't played a horn in a while that played head and shoulders better than mine. So, I fiddled with a couple of different mouthpieces to see if there was a fit issue (gap) and what the differences might be, but pretty much any mouthpiece seemed to play uniformly consistent with whichever slide happened to be in the horn. Intonation with the #2 slide was dead on though, especially if I was playing melodic type things in the staff. Anyway after a while, I decided to try out slide #1. WOW! Big difference. All of a sudden the upper register was MUCH easier to play and when I fiddled around with some High C plus stuff, this horn certainly wasn't the limiting factor. Compared next to my Bach, it seems to have much better compression/back pressure and there is no fighting to get the horn to pop up there. Of course this is just my first impression with some fairly unsystematic fiddling and testing. It was only today when I decided to look it up that I found out that the #1 slide is the most open of all of the tuning slides offered for the Wild Thing. The one thing that has really surprised me is how responsive this horn is for how heavy it is. I'll keep everyone posted on how the rest of my demo on the Wild Thing goes.